Ryan Nelsen is reluctant to criticize his home field, but it's clear the Toronto FC head coach is near the breaking point.

Put it this way: If there's a couple of cows and some goats grazing on the BMO Field pitch on Wednesday night prior to the first leg of the Canadian championship, no one would be overly shocked.

Certainly not Nelsen, who expressed his frustrations over the state of the BMO Field surface on Monday after a practice at TFC's training facility in Downsview.

"It's a major problem, a major leveler," said Nelsen, who compared the BMO Field grass to an ice hockey rink full of bumps, deep cracks and holes. "That evens it out for the other team."

The condition of BMO Field has been a talking point since TFC's home opener on March 22. It was poor then and, apparently, it's not much better now. Players and coaches were reluctant to use the pitch as an excuse for Saturday's 2-1 loss to the New England Revolution, but you could see the frustration simmering at the surface following the match.

"It's frustrating, because we want to play an attractive, attacking brand of football, and the field at the moment, it's probably not conducive to that unfortunately," said Nelsen. "In saying that, we still put together 530 passes on Saturday and that was more than any team in the whole league did, even on the better fields. It's the brand of football we want to be playing, and we want to be hard to beat, which is frustrating because we let in a couple of soft goals."

Veteran midfielder Dwayne De Rosario agreed with his coach's assessment of the BMO Field pitch, taking his frustrations one step further.

"If you look at the last couple of games at home, it's almost like the other team had the advantage playing on our field," said the Toronto native. "We need to change that. Obviously, there's two teams playing on it, but we're a team that likes to play on the ground, play a ball movement and ball speed (game) and it's hard -- when you've got bobbles and the grass is high like last game -- to really penetrate and get those balls through.

"But in saying that, if we're looking to make a playoff push and potentially go on to the Cup, we'll have to play at BMO in pretty much in worse conditions than we have right now (in the fall)," added De Rosario. "So we have to learn how to deal with that and just battle through the field conditions."

The City of Toronto owns BMO Field and it's managed by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment on behalf of the city. MLSE's Peter Church, general manager of BMO Field and Ricoh Coliseum, said the harsh winter has taken a toll on the field.

"Colder-than-normal temperatures, heavy snow and the ice storm all had a negative impact on the pitch," said Church. "It has almost recovered and is looking good on the surface, but the root zone is about a month behind where we were last year. I think you will find most golf courses in the GTA were affected in the same way, or worse."

When asked on Monday if the grass at the team's practice facility was any better, Ryan gestured toward the two practice surfaces, which are covered in yellow streaks, and shook his head.

"It's dead," he said. "I'm not really sure what's going on, but it's been a harsh winter. But hopefully we can get BMO Field right and, hopefully, on Wednesday it will be in a bit better shape and just needs a bit of sun."

Ryan was asked to shed some light on his lineup for Wednesday's match against the visiting Vancouver Whitecaps.

"We don't play for a week after that, we don't have a game on the weekend, so I'll put out a strong team, a team that I think can win," he said.

When asked if that would include the likes of Jermain Defoe or Michael Bradley, the coach added: "Well, we're going to check. There's a few knocks and a few strains, but those guys who were on the 50-50 we probably won't play. But the rest who are fit and ready to go (will play)."

The Reds have won the Canadian Championship in four of the six seasons since the competition began in 2008, with the Montreal Impact winning last year.

The second game of the home-and-away series will be played a week Wednesday at B.C. Place in Vancouver.